Skip to content
GetProfitable
Search

Prohibited strategies, news restrictions and your rules sheet

Lesson 8 · about 9 min

The last group of rules describes what you may not do at all. Breaches here are the most frustrating way to fail, because the trade may have been profitable. This lesson lists the common prohibitions, explains the reasoning, and then turns everything from Module 2 into a one-page rules sheet you can keep beside the screen.

Prohibited strategies

The list differs by firm but the same items recur. Understanding why each is banned helps you spot the ones the firm did not spell out.

Prohibition Why the firm bans it
Hedging across accounts or firms Guarantees one account passes; the firm is paying for a coin flip
Group or copy trading with other people Same trade across many accounts; some will pass by chance
Latency, arbitrage or "tick scalping" bots Exploits sim fills that would not exist in a live market
Holding through the session close Sim cannot model overnight risk; live accounts would need margin
Trading during restricted news windows Sim fills around news are unrealistic; also large slippage risk for the firm
Martingale, grid or "all in" sizing Creates one giant lucky day; interacts with consistency rules
Exceeding contract or lot caps Direct risk control
Trading illiquid contracts or far months Sim prices unreliable; exploitable
Sharing account access or using a VPN to mask location Identity, jurisdiction and fraud controls
Using the firm's data feed for other purposes Exchange data licence terms

A catch-all clause usually follows: trading "in a manner inconsistent with a live market" or "with the intent of exploiting the simulated environment". Firms have used this to deny payouts for behaviour that broke no specific rule. The defence is simple: trade the way you would with your own live money.

News restrictions

Forex and CFD firms commonly prohibit opening or closing positions within a window around scheduled high-impact releases, such as 2 minutes before to 2 minutes after, or 5 and 5, or 10 and 10. Some apply the rule only to the evaluation, some only to funded accounts, some to both. Some allow holding through the release but not opening or closing inside the window. Futures firms less often have formal news rules but frequently restrict trading in the seconds around the cash open or major releases, or simply widen slippage in the sim.

Practical handling:

  1. Keep an economic calendar open, filtered to the currencies or products you trade.
  2. Write the window in minutes on your rules sheet.
  3. Do not have a trade open that could reach its stop inside the window; a stop triggered inside the window has at some firms been ruled a breach.

Building your rules sheet

You now have every rule category. Put them on one page. The point is that during the session you never have to remember a rule; you read it.

FIRM: ______________   PLAN: ______________   DATE OF THESE RULES: ________
Contracting entity: ______________  Country: ______________

TARGET: $______ closed, net of fees.   Time limit: ______ days / none
Consistency: ____% of (target | total profit | profit since payout)
  -> max daily profit: $______

DAILY LOSS LIMIT: $______ measured from (SOD balance | SOD equity | start)
  Open trades count: yes / no      Breach = (fail | lock for day)
  -> tomorrow's line: $__________   (recompute every evening)

MAX DRAWDOWN: $______ type: (static | EOD trailing | intraday trailing)
  Trails on: (closed balance | open equity)   Locks at: $______
  -> today's line: $__________   (recompute every evening; never lower)

MINIMUM DAYS: ____   "Day" means: ________________________

SIZE CAP: ____ minis / ____ micros at current balance
  -> my risk per trade: $______ = 1/____ of daily limit (Module 3)

SESSION: close all by ______ (platform time).  Overnight: allowed / banned
NEWS: no open/close within ____ min before and ____ min after high-impact
PROHIBITED: __________________________________________________
PAYOUT (funded): min $______, cadence ______, buffer $______, split ____%
RULE-CHANGE LOG: ____________________________________________

Fill it from the firm's own terms page, and save a dated PDF of that page next to the sheet. When the firm changes something (they will), add a line to the change log and print a new sheet.

Key idea: Rules are not something you learn once. They are numbers that change every evening (daily line, drawdown line, size cap) and occasionally without notice (everything else). A written sheet turns "I think I'm fine" into "the line is $49,900 and I am $700 above it."

Two habits that prevent technical failures

Set the platform's own limits. Most trading platforms let you set a daily loss lock and a maximum position size at the platform level. Set them tighter than the firm's rules: if the firm's daily limit line is $1,000 away, set the platform to lock you at $600. If the contract cap is 3, set the platform maximum to 2. The firm's rule then becomes unreachable by accident.

Flatten early. If the session close rule is 4:10pm, be flat by 3:55pm. If the news window opens at 8:28am, be flat by 8:20am. Margins of minutes cost nothing and remove an entire class of failure.

Try it: Fill in the rules sheet above for one firm, in full, from the firm's terms. Time how long it takes. If you cannot find an answer for a line, email support before buying and paste the reply into your notes.

Recap

  • Prohibited strategies share a logic: anything that makes one account pass by chance, exploits the simulator, or creates risk the sim cannot model.
  • The "inconsistent with a live market" catch-all is defeated by trading as you would with real money.
  • News windows are firm-specific; keep a calendar and be flat before them, with stops that cannot trigger inside them.
  • Keep a one-page rules sheet with dollar lines recomputed every evening, set platform-level limits tighter than the firm's, and flatten early.

See it drawn

Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.

Slippage on a market orderA buy order clears four price levels, so the average price paid is worse than the price first quoted.Buy 1,000 shares at marketpricesell orders resting (bar length = size)20.04300 shares20.03200 shares20.01200 shares20.00300 sharesnothing resting at 20.02order sweeps up the bookaverage fill 20.02SLIPPAGE0.02 a share$20.00 in totalintended 20.00Each level fills at its own price; the average is what you really paid.
Slippage on a market order. You click at 20.00, but only 300 shares are resting there, so the rest of the order fills at 20.01, 20.03 and 20.04. The average price paid is 20.02, and that two-cent gap is slippage.
An equity curve and its drawdownAn account balance rising over a year, falling from a peak to a trough, then climbing back to the old peak.ACCOUNT EQUITY$20k$12k$8k024681012TIME (MONTHS)PEAK $16,000TROUGH $12,000DRAWDOWN−25%RECOVERY
Equity curve and drawdown. An account balance plotted month by month. The fall from the $16,000 peak to the $12,000 trough is a 25% drawdown, and the shaded area lasts until the balance climbs back to the old peak.
How a position size is worked outAccount size, risk per trade and stop distance feed into one box giving the number of shares.ACCOUNT SIZE$25,000your capitalRISK PER TRADE1%of the accountSTOP DISTANCE$0.50entry to stopPOSITION SIZE500 sharesrisk budget: $25,000 × 1% = $250position size: $250 ÷ $0.50 = 500 shares
Working out a position size. Three numbers decide how big a trade is: the account, the share of it put at risk, and the distance from entry to stop. One percent of $25,000 is a $250 budget, and a $0.50 stop divides into that 500 times.

Finished this module? Take the module quiz.